I think certainly if I'd started getting published when I was in my early twenties, I was quite sheltered then and didn't know anything much about the world. I hadn't had any direct experience of how the world works.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I know that when I grew up I was pretty sheltered, and didn't come to understand much about the world until I was in my really late teens and early twenties, and that process continues.
When I left college I thought - based on a staggeringly inadequate understanding of how the world worked - that I might like to go into book publishing.
I don't know if I had ever found my place in the world until I fully committed to being a writer.
I see the world from a very specific perspective. It is how I grew up. It is what I am proud of, and I vocalize it. And for those who have not experienced my experience, it is odd, and it's not mainstream.
I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.
I published only in academic journals in philosophy until I was in my 40s, but I had been writing fiction and poetry my whole adult life - without ever once trying to publish it, and rarely letting anyone read it.
The world has gotten smaller and more accessible since I first started writing in the 70's.
I was hugely formed by stories I was told as a child whether that was in a book, the cinema, theatre or television and probably television more than any medium is what influenced me as a child and formed my response to literature, story-telling and, therefore, the world around me.
My parents were journalists and friends with writers, artists, and just a really interesting assortment of people, so I was exposed to all lifestyles from a young age.
I'd never been published when I was young.